Together Again
by BlazeInfinity
Summary: Following a string of mysterious events, Index has to be spirited away to England for safety, leaving Touma behind. For Touma, however, this change has quite a long list of bright sides. Kaori Kanzaki is just one of them. (Touma/Kaori, rated T for humor, language, Tsuchimikado's behavior, etcetera, etcetera.)
1. Hello, Goodbye

_And if the spirit is willing and the rivers don't rise  
And the light doesn't disappear out of our eyes  
And adventure stays with us with its pain and surprise we'll be together again  
And if the line takes the strain and the rope doesn't break  
And the venom stays asleep in the tooth of the snake  
And we don't hold against us the mistakes that we made  
Oh, we'll be together again_

- Dougie Maclean, "We'll Be Together Again"

* * *

**Chapter 1**

_**Hello, Goodbye**_

* * *

"Toumaaaa..!" a part-exasperated, part-depressed whine came from Index, currently entertaining herself with the highly meaningful action of pacing back and forth in the main room of Touma's apartment. The dark-haired teenager sighed, sitting behind the locked door of his bathroom. Right now, that was singlehandedly the only thing he could do to avoid her attacking him and biting him bloody. God, but sometimes being her friend slash foster father slash keeper slash renewable source of food was pretty damn impossible. In a way, he was glad – and he felt bad about it, because he knew that was very selfish of him – about this recent turn of events that he was only informed of yesterday.

_Oh, right, you people don't know about this, _he thought to himself loudly, as he liked to do sometimes, imagining (?) an audience listening to him, the protagonist and narrator of a story that was anything but boring (… right?). _Style called me, Kamijou Touma, yesterday. Short summary of what you need to know: Index is leaving, at least for the time being (the time in question being a loosely defined term). Apparently the Church of England noticed a sudden rather unexpected surge in inquiries being made about Index in rather… disreputable circles, and Style, as well as other leading officials in the Church, thinks it best if Index lay low for a while. I'm not sure why they think this is a problem more worrisome than any other I've encountered due to Index until now, but apparently I'm getting an explanation the moment they get here._

_Which would be today. At some point._

"Touma, I'm hungry!" Index's wail, interrupting Touma's inner monologue, was way too woebegone to actually mean what she said. It was more likely a not-particularly clever ruse to get him out of the bathroom (thank gods both Shinto and Christian for bathroom door locks).

"The fridge is full," muttered Touma, with a look of annoyance on his face (because who wouldn't be annoyed after spending the morning sitting on the toilet without any actual point to said sitting?), "take whatever you need."

He certainly wasn't having a fun time, either. Index, after all, was (despite all the irritation, trouble, merciless biting, etcetera and etcetera) his friend and he didn't feel right just kicking her out like this. Touma wasn't exactly appreciating the fact that she was looking at this the same way she looked at anything he did that she didn't like: that this was something to torture - usually by way of biting him so badly he had to be driven to the hospital due to blood loss - him over. It wasn't easy for him either.

"Toumaaaaaa…" her whine – in that same familiar tone that she had whenever he refused to buy her a toy or a pet – came from the main room again, this time less depressed and a bit louder. "Why do I have to go? It's not fair!"

Possibly. Then again, this DID mean he could finally have his bed back. After disinfecting the sheets. There was so much cat hair in them every time he washed them he was actually scared of what insidious experiments Index performed on Sphinx at night. This would be an opportunity to… well, really, get back to normal life. Somewhat. Until next Wednesday, at least, when Style would probably show up and drag him into something highly misfortunate. Or worse, Himegami… or Misaka. Either of those two would be a living walking counter to any sort of normal life.

He did not even want to consider how anti-normal would be anything someone like, say, Accelerator dragged him into.

"It's for your own good, Index-"

His phone rang loudly, the ringtone echoing throughout the room. No doubt it was Style, or Tsuchimikado, calling him to inform the Church has brought along its delegates and will be visiting sometime soon. Perhaps they're even downstairs.

Touma jumped to his feet and he reached for his pocket. And then the other one. And then he sighed and muttered, in a typical habit of his, "_Fuko da."_

His phone was evidently left out in the main room. The dark-haired youth muttered a few curses, steeled himself in advance to becoming a victim of childish sadism, readied his reflexes and unlocked the door, taking a bold, very, very bold step outside.

If I was a different sort of writer, here we would have a (well-deserved, no less) timeskip to where Touma is already treating his wounds, namely the bitemarks Index's latest assault left him. However, after a lot of personal debate with mostly myself I decided that there is a much more logical turn of events to be had here.

As Touma slammed the door open and stepped outside, just as he expected, Index pretty much pounced at him, trying to claw her way atop his head (which she would then promptly bite without mercy). It was that expectation that saved him. Immediately, he ducked, thus removing himself as a viable obstacle to Index's flight and consequently redirecting said flight's destination to the inside of the bathroom. He felt a slight pang of guilt when he heard her hit the floor, but, to be fair, she did try to bite him in the FREAKING HEAD.

Using this advantage – which he would not, he knew, have again – he raced towards his phone, slapping it open and holding it to his ear just as he dashed for the door.

"This is Kamijou Touma speaking-"

He had no time to lock the door, because Index was by now (mad with rage, too) right behind him. He merely slammed it closed hastily and dashed down the corridor towards the elevator which, he honestly hoped, would've been a legitimate refuge.

"Uh," a voice belonging to a person that was so unused to being unsure of herself, yet felt exactly this way right now, said from the other end of the line, "this is Kaori. Kanzaki."

Touma would've grinned, normally – Kanzaki was one of those few people which, nowadays, he never really saw any downsides to meeting – she was remarkably incapable of being irritating. However, these were not normal circumstances, especially because the elevator door slammed closed right in front of him, prompting him to hastily sprint for the stairs with all of his might.

"Kanzaki-san, I'm really- kind of- well, not really in the best situation right now! Please tell me you can take Index off my hands, like, right now, before she kills me- uungh!"

In a sheer fit of _fuko da_ too great to be illustrated by any known words in any human language, Touma, in the process of racing down the stairs, slipped. **Slipped. **His phone lashed right out of his hands and down the stairs, while he achieved something that extreme sports fanatics have long tried to do but eventually after millions of failed attempts deemed a level of misfortune beyond the capability of a normal human being. He slipped so dramatically, his entire body twisted, bending over the barrier separating the stairwell from, well, thin air (a lot of it: thin air all the way down to the parking lot) and he fell. Down. In those few seconds of him falling, he closed his eyes. There was a bright flash, and a scream, and…

For a moment, he thought he had died. Then somebody laughed. A woman. Wait…

Touma opened his eyes, took a glance to the left, to the right, and then fixated his eyes on the beautiful purple-haired woman right in front of him. Who was, yeah, laughing. Himself, he couldn't exactly laugh. There was something wrong with the picture here. He was just… sitting. Just like that. On… the street. Wait, since when was the street squishy and… moving?

"Will you get off of me already?" Style-Magnus muttered from under him. Apparently, somehow, by some sheer uncontrollably absurd strand of logic that makes sense only in the weirdest of plotlines, Touma managed landing flatly on the guy, slamming him right to the ground. And apparently, somehow, by some sheer uncontrollably absurd strand of logic, Kaori was finding this amusing. Touma sighed and grabbed on to the sheathed katana she held out for him to use as leverage to get up.

Just for a moment, their fingers touched. The sword-maiden seemed to blush. Touma knew _he_ definitely blushed, because – he had a habit for noticing stuff like this, and said habit was really annoying him lately – he noticed her _beautiful _breasts bounce under that shirt of hers-

_Gah! Focus!_

"Now then," said Style, dusting his cloak off, "I don't think you fell out of the fifth floor for legitimate reasons – you never do. So I can only assume Index will be down shortly. Don't take the card out of your pocket, please, until you're sure she won't bite you."

"What card..?" came a confused response from Touma, right before he felt something in his back pocket. Realization struck him just as Index, with a face red with childlike rage, raced down the last stairs and towards him, growling nothing particularly articulate-

… and bumped into… well, thin air. It was as if someone had erected an invisible barrier between him and Index.

"Ha! You can't touch me!" he growled, triumphantly, as Index put on her best impression of a mime, trying to find a way through the invisible barrier. There was none, apparently.

This was not happening! For once in his lifetime, he was actually safe from her bites?! Finally!

"Ahaha! You can't touch me while I have this!"

Touma salvaged the card from his pocket, holding it up in the air victoriously. And just as he did that, another realization struck him, one that had a _lot _to do with the soundless invisible explosion that he felt shake the air as he touched the card. A lot like a typical neutralization he performed on any other supernatural power with Imagine Breaker.

"No, you fool!" shrieked Style, as Index successfully stepped through the now neutralized invisible barrier. Touma gulped.

"_FUKO DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"_

* * *

TL;DR: Touma had a LOT of bites on him after that.

Right now, he was sitting in the departure hall in Academy City's airport, by a table on the other side of which sat Style-Magnus. Kanzaki stood beside, her arms crossed on her chest. (I see what you're thinking, fanboys.) Style lit his trademark cigarette and started talking, after a quick glance to make sure that Index was still picking her toy on the toy vending machine.

"Right, Kamijou. You know the situation, I've told you about it on the phone. There have been a lot of inquiries about Index lately, in secret agencies of less than good reputation. And I mean a _lot_. The amount has literally jumped from zero to more than acceptable in one day. That was two weeks ago. By now, we've caught so much chatter about this topic it's not even funny anymore."

Touma's face contorted into a rather frustrated expression.

"You see, Touma-san," Kaori spoke, quietly, "We've never had info about Index be transferred so quick through such mundane channels as a private investigation agency, even if it was one of the best. Mainly because the major threats to Index, if they _used _such a channel, could be identified and isolated and dealt with rather quickly."

Her eyes drifted from him, watching away at nothing at all. Her face betrayed her regret.

"We haven't been able to, this time."

The look on her face was just so miserable. For the first time in her entire life, she didn't seem to have been able to deal with an enemy. For the first time in her life, she seemed to have actually less than succeeded at a task. For the first time in her life, she had failed to protect what she valued the most. Touma felt guilty, as if he had been the one to cause her to feel this way.

"I'm sure it wasn't your fault," he murmured loud enough for her to hear, even though he knew it wouldn't help much. Well, the bright side was that she at least smiled at him. A shy and very pretty smile, with just a trace of a blush on her face, too. She was really endearing sometimes, to be perfectly honest. And when she wasn't, well, then she was just plainly _hot_.

_Dammit, Touma, keep it in your pants!_

"It was," she replied, still smiling, "but thanks anyway. The point is, the trace of the culprit got lost in a chain of sixteen different fake identities used to communicate with these agencies. A pro is after Index, and what's worse, it's probably not a magician, so we have no idea of what moves he might take – a magician would be pretty easy to stall for you. Not to mention, there's too much information about her already out. If we don't spirit Index away to London, there will be an _obscene _number of agents and bounty hunters after her. That's why she has to be taken away."

"I don't understand," Touma scratched his forehead. "Why can't you just place a stronger guard on her here? I already hardly own anything in my dorm," he grinned more at Kaori and less at Style, "I could go live on the street if you need a place to stay. It's hardly an improvement from the bathroom. Or, a better question: why can't I go with you guys to London?"

"Placing a stronger guard on her requires resources we don't really have," Style replied, scratching at his cigarette. "And you going to London is too problematic. I don't know if you've noticed, but it _is _the middle of the school year. Someone would notice, and it wouldn't be Tsuchimikado."

"Ehehe," Touma gave an awkward laugh. These were rather depressingly solid arguments. Depressingly not so much because he was worried about Index going away – the thought that his bed would finally be his own again was just too fantastic to worry about anything else by this point – but rather because he should've thought of them himself. "Got it. Now, though, there's one problem. Index will be safe in London, I'm sure of this. But… not to sound selfish, but what about me? Me and Tsuchimikado are literally the only people here who will help me if someone, still uninformed that Index has left for England, brings, say, an army of bounty hunters here. I and my psychopath right hand – both literally and figuratively – can only take on so many people at once."

"First of all, I trust you, Kamijou Touma," Style looked him straight in the eyes, a piercing glare that at the very core said, basically: _'Prove to me you deserve it'_. "Second, we've actually… taken precautions for your safety, and we trust those precautions even more. Thirdly, you won't be alone with Tsuchimikado, not just because this is a city but also because Kaori seems to want to stay here. For the time being."

There are some points in your life that the only logical thing to do seems to be dilating your eyes so they look like silver plates, give your conversation partner a quizzical expression that only translates into English as "srsly man wow that's" and then use your mobile to post a status on Facebook saying nothing but one word: "Winning."

Unfortunately, Kamijou Touma neither thought of doing these things nor managed to think of doing them as before the surprise managed wearing off, his "psychopath right hand" showed up.

"Kamiyaaaan~!" Tsuchimikado, standing just a few steps behind them, yelled in that typical schoolboy way of his, immediately prompting a response from Kaori: clenched teeth. "Only you, my friend, manage to trade a child you've been babysitting for hell knows how long now for a sexy swordmaiden bodyguard! Unintentionally! Take good care of Neechin, now, she's wanted to take care of _you _for a long time…"

"SHUT UP!" Kanzaki growled, both embarrassed and enraged, pointing a finger angrily at the blonde teenager. "I'm not, er… taking care… of anyone! Why can't you ever just go away, Tsuchimikado?!"

"Nor is she your bodyguard. She merely opted to spend some time here, home in Japan. Nevertheless," Style said, calmly, lighting another cigarette, "Tsuchimikado is right on one thing. Take care of Kaori, Kamijou Touma. She has certain inadequacies with washing machines."

Touma shot a confused glance at Kanzaki, who tacitly averted her eyes while clutching her fists and put on an air that spoke of nothing less than the urgent need to punch Tsuchimikado and Style both in the face. Then he redirected his glance to Tsuchimikado, who was currently dying of laughter, and to Style, who put on a bit of a smile on his face, but that cleared up few of his doubts. "You're never going to let me live through that incident, will you?" Kaori said, almost grating her teeth while at it.

"No, not really. Back to business, though. Tsuchimikado, you've arranged for a place for Kaori to stay, I hope?"

As Style said this, his eyes fixated on the blond kid as if to pierce him through. It was plain that Style quite simply did not trust the teenager's ability to do anything other than lie.

"I did indeed, barcode face! And it's most likely safe, too. There's a nifty hotel down the street. I would've gotten her baggage there, too, if I'd managed to catch up to you before now."

Touma had seen many, many, many scary things throughout his life. Too many to list, really. But still, he couldn't help but gasp when Kanzaki took her sword and flung it, with a bit of a feel that she wanted to kill him with it (even if it was still sheathed), at Tsuchimikado, who unceremoniously caught it with one hand.

"Here. My baggage."

* * *

The aircraft broke its contact with the earth, lifting off the ground with a dull and rather quiet thud.

What? You expected some sort of belletristic commentary on how the airplane achieved the divine task of defying gravity, and as it disappeared, it looked rather like an eagle? Who am I supposed to be, Victor Hugo? Find another victim to ply your sick scenery porn desires on. Airplanes have been defying gravity since their very inception. By now it's neither divine nor unusual, especially considering that is the very way of discerning an airplane from a bike. And I'm not sure how idiotic you have to be to liken a plane to an eagle in the 21st century, for one because an eagle can actually flap its wings and emits way less CO2 into the atmosphere. The Wright Brothers' days are long gone, there's nothing actually romantic anymore about airplanes. They've become what they are now – tools for moving people from one place to another much quicker than usual.

Touma and Kaori, observing as the plane distanced itself away from them and vanished beyond the horizon, felt nothing poetic about its flight, either. They watched on thinking not of defiance towards nature or of, in sharp contrast, the pseudo-natural pseudo-poeticism of the aircraft and its ability to climb the skies, but of the fact that their dear friend, Index, was being swept away to a quite distant place by that, well, tool.

"Well, that's over with," Touma spoke, after quite a while. "Want a bite to eat?"

Kanzaki, surprised by the unexpected question, did something of a half-gasp, half-cough. And slightly blushed. Deep within the dark bowels of his mind, some perverted part of Touma's personality was highly enjoying the sight. Most of the rest of his personality, by contrast, didn't exactly feel comfortable with making Kaori feel uncomfortable, and forced him to say, "You don't need to if you don't want to-"

"No! No, I want to," she interrupted him rather eagerly, delivering him a bright smile. "Let's go, Kamijou Touma. Let's go grab a bite to eat."

* * *

**Well. Now that you're past that, I would like to make a few notes.**

**1) You've read both the description and the story; by now, I'm relatively, more or less, somewhat a bit just a little, sure that you realize this is mostly a romance fanfic. Thank God, it's not just that, otherwise, knowing my experience with romance fanfics, I'd go, "nuuuuuu I'm just bored nuuuuuu" right after writing the first chapter. I'm trying to develop something of a main plot for the pairing to run alongside to without pushing it into the background or, quite the opposite, being pushed into the background. Of course, there is the slight problem that I might get bored of this just like I do of all my **_**other **_**fanfics, but at least it will (hopefully) be at least three chapters in.**

**2) Guys, if I do get bored, feel free to bombard me with demands to continue, like readers did with my "Otherwise". Also, I'm really sorry to the readers of that sad fic, but after I wrote the first and only chapter I sort of felt like I had accomplished my great historical goal of making ASoIaF less tragic. Anything more felt like an overextension. If I get bored with this one, though, remind me that my great historical goal in writing this one was writing a legitimately long enough Touma/Kaori fic because there _aren't enough to sate basic human justice_ and that goal will not be accomplished until the fic's FINISHED to its very penultimate end.**

**3) My grasp of canon is really bad. I'm only scratching myself through the last episodes of the anime, and I have not read the light novels nor read the manga. Quite frankly: this diverges from the plotline at the end of the second season of the **_**Toaru Majutsu no Index **_**anime. So I apologize in advance for any inaccuracies of any sort.**

**4) On the name of the story, and the song quoted at the beginning. "We'll Be Together Again" is a folk song by Dougie MacLean, the world's most underrated candidate for both most badass man on the face of the earth and best singer ever. I admit it, the title was halfassed a bit – I merely took the song I happened to be listening to (which I thought was as good a theme song for the Touma/Kaori pairing as… for any other pairing, really) and tossed it in as both a direct inspiration for the title and as a quote at the beginning of the story. What I find rather interesting that the song works not only as a theme song for Touma and Kaori, but also (in a friendly and/or friendzonely way) as a good background to Index leaving. Just a random thought.**

**5) There is the matter of Style/Stiyl/Steyr/idunno-Magnus's name. The official English translation seems to be Stiyl, but myself, I'm not much a fan of that transcription, and much more used to one variant I found in a fansub I watch: Style-Magnus. My personal overall favourite is the Japanese pronunciation - Steyr - but that's so distant from Stiyl that the part of the fandom that watches dubs and not subs like me would probably not get it all. So I went for something which is somewhat more aesthetically pleasant (well, to my ear) but is less unexpected to English speakers.  
**

**6) Review pls gais i beg u**


	2. Day Out

_We live on front porches and swing life away,_

_We get by just fine here on minimum wage._

_If love is a labor, I'll slave __'til the end,_

_I won't cross these streets until you hold my hand._

- Rise Against, "Swing Life Away"

* * *

**Chapter 2**

_**Day Out**_

* * *

There are three great struggles humanity faces in the modern world. Aside from, well, you know, all the actual real struggles humanity faces in the modern world.

There's using Internet Explorer for long enough to actually get a better browser. The entire duration of said usage of IE has been known to be so excessive that it occasionally actually left people traumatized for life. Then there's the state of the gaming industry as we know it right now - Skyrim and The Witcher 2 are bright lights in a dying sky blackened by pollution - and then, right, then there's spending a day out with a girl.

With our _male _bros, we guys usually have pretty lax habits on how we hang out. (That rule doesn't apply to everyone, mind you.) Myself, I crash down with my mates on my couch with piles of oftentimes disgustingly unhealthy junk food and we proceed to watch comedies, horror movies, science fiction or anime, regularly making cheeky comments about how shit goes down there. With our significant others and _female _bros, we guys have to develop something the ancients have only spoken of in the most horrific prophecies of ancient lore: _standards_.

There is a horrifyingly long list of things we have to do when out with girls. We have to actually cater to their conversational needs other than a few passing cynical remarks on the plot of a movie we're watching. We suddenly, out of nowhere, need to actually stop scratching our noses and to hide the Pepsi and the tacos until we're given some sort of signal that we can bring them out to share (and that signal will at some point most likely come, because every human being has the flaw of being a willing victim of Pepsi and tacos). We need to stop slouching on the couch and take the girl out for dinner at some "quaint nice little café" rather than our favorite döner kebab bar. Worst of all, it's pretty likely we will need to _pay_.

The best part is that there are girls out there who do not fit that description at all, and we will fight to the bloody death for the right to slouch on the couch eating junk food and watching Star Wars with them.

Kaori was such a girl, Touma decided the moment she opted for a ramen bar rather than any of the cafes around, in a way. Minus the slouch part, because she didn't seem a person to slouch, ever. He didn't really mind it.

She got herself a bowl of _shōyu_ ramen. All by herself. She didn't ask Touma to buy it nor handed him the money and asked him to buy it for her, no, she went up and got it, all by herself, and didn't leave him the difficult task of balancing two ramen bowls without spilling either one.

Touma grinned at his mental contemplation. He knew her for a while now, and none of this was really any surprise. It suited her – this image of a tough, dour she-warrior with a softer side she only really ever showed to him or Index.

Kaori noticed him watching her and got just a bit lost – awkwardness settled into the air, as she briefly smiled, but then, as if ashamed for some reason, she shyly looked away. Touma coughed, slightly. He appreciated her kind side, but didn't exactly appreciate the way she sometimes felt embarrassed about showing it.

"So, how's life? Missed Japan?"

It was a horrible excuse of a beginning to a conversation, but he tried. Kaori seemed to relax a bit at this, thankfully enough, so not all was lost.

"I did," Kaori nodded slightly while saying this. She seemed to relax with every word – well, that or this was some sort of ramen side effect spreading through her. "I don't think I will ever quite feel as much at home in England as I do in Japan. Necessarius or no Necessarius, I was born and raised here, and, well, sometimes, I feel like I'm more meant to be here than anywhere else. Know the feeling, Kamijou-san? That you belong somewhere above all else?"

"Sure, I do," Touma replied, grinning just a little bit. She must've noticed it, because a smile appeared on a corner of her lips.

"Do you, now?" she asked, her smile deepening just a little bit.

"Does 'in some mess' count?"

Kaori laughed quietly, her pretty purple eyes fixating on Touma afterwards, a shy grin still playing around on her face.

"Sorry."

"What?" Touma asked, confused. "Why?"

"Well, it's just that… you wouldn't cause yourself so many problems if you didn't spend so much of your time helping others for no reason but the kindness of your heart. And I don't think I would like you half as much if you didn't."

The dark-haired teenager leant back in his chair, a jokingly serious expression carved into his face. "You can't just tell me that the only redeeming quality of my entire personality is my habit of putting my ass in danger for others."

"But that's a habit that speaks volumes about your personality! You're brave, kind and relentless, Kamijou Touma. In a way, you're like me."

"Except you're pretty and I'm just, well. Eheh."

Surprising our incredibly oblivious friend, Kaori blushed. However, at some point the human mind, especially one as sharp as Kaori's, realizes it can only achieve so much blushing and comes to the somewhat illogical conclusion that an end must be put to said blushes for no other reason than personal dignity, and she did the only thing she thought she could at this point: took a gulp of ramen and changed the subject.

"So how's life been for you? You don't seem at all distraught that Index had to leave."

"I've been fine," Touma brushed the question aside somewhat, "I mean, I was somewhat sad at first when I heard the news, but, then again, there is the overwhelming bright side that I get my room and my privacy back. And, well, you know. What Style said is true enough. I can't protect Index. I _can _help protect her, because she's my friend, and that means, at this point, letting her go."

Kanzaki shifted somewhat uncomfortably in her chair and was met with another quizzical expression from Touma. She noticed it and adopted her most serious face. "You're not… dating, right?" she asked him, prompting, without much delay, a laugh.

"No, no. We're friends, but she's too much a child. Although I have no idea how old she actually is, but she looks and acts like a twelve year old. She's my friend and a good person, but… nothing more."

"_Is_ there anyone **more**, well, in your life?" she asked, easing back into her zone of comfort, as calmly as she could, trying to create the impression of someone just purely curious. As we know, Touma is hardly the most empathetic person around, so it worked.

"No, not really. It's hardly been the easiest time to have someone around, you know?" he asked somewhat rhetorically, not really noticing the smile on her face. "What about you? Are you dating anyone?"

"Heh, no. It's hardly been the easiest time to have someone around when you're living in a women's dormitory. And unlike some of my roommates, I don't swing that way."

"Don't have anyone you like? At all?"

Most people, and by most I mean all of them, have at some point in their lives encountered such a dilemma as Kaori was having now. A truthful, complete answer would call out an utterly unpredictable reaction, while a lie would make her feel less than pleasant herself and could've impressed upon Touma – what scared her most – the idea that she was unreachable. She could also say, "I do like someone" with no small amount of vagueness, opaquely describing Touma without using his name, as girls used to do in romcoms back in the nineties before it got overused and boring. To say she was lost was to make a huge understatement.

She didn't think it was possible, but she was actually glad (well, to a point where gladness intertwined so closely with frustration over her moment with Touma being interrupted that she wasn't really sure if she was _glad_ glad or _dammit_ glad) when Misaka Mikoto, Academy City's least reasonable, most likely to break soda machines, and oftentimes second-funniest level 5 esper introduced herself into the situation.

"Touma!" she utterly unexpectedly addressed him, appearing from what was rather similar to thin air right next to their table. As was typical of her, she addressed him with no honorific and as accusatively as she could manage.

"Hi," he replied, calmly, with a face where mild curiosity and disinterest, instead of cancelling each other out as you'd expect them to, mixed and intertwined, translating his thoughts into an expression that, more or less, said, _'What now?'_

"You completely ignored me, Kamijou Touma, although I've been in this shop for five minutes already" she said, crossing her arms with a face that implied, in its entirety, as if she mercifully deigned to give him some sort of right to notice her and he scorned the possibility all in itself.

Touma's expression showed no particular signs of change as he said, "I'm in the middle of lunch and a conversation here, Misaka-"

"And who is this?" Mikoto interrupted him, staring rather coldly at Kaori. At first, Kaori didn't seem to react in any way, but slowly, her eyes narrowed and what remained of her smile faded. "What's your connection to Touma, swordgirl?"

The poor choice of words and Mikoto's tone finally did it. Kaori rose to her feet, a disgruntled expression written on her face as if she had just drunk something caustic. The overwhelming difference – which Mikoto would've been incredibly ignorant not to notice – in the two girls' heights addressed any and all of Misaka's concerns rather quickly. However, it seemed as if she still had doubts as to whether Kaori was a force to be reckoned with, so Kaori, as if absentmindedly, stretched a hand back and scratched the handle of her katana.

"I'm sorry," she said, trying her best to resist the urge to grin at Misaka's expression, "is there a problem?"

A cold, but very, very energetic flame blazed up in her purple eyes, doing its best to burn out Misaka's eyes from a distance.

"… Uh. Hehe…" Misaka spoke, rather inarticulately, scratching the back of her head awkwardly and trying her best to hide her fear. "No. Not at all. I was… just going. Right."

"Kaori," Touma said, with the most serious expression she had ever seen him wear, as she sat down, "that was either the greatest or the scariest thing I've ever seen in my life. I'm serious. Stop laughing."

"Just out of curiosity," Kaori said, still stifling a quiet laugh in her throat, "How many times a day do you have to go through something like this?"

"Usually about six."

* * *

The sun slowly set on Academy City, its weak, sleepy rays disappearing beyond the buildings on the distant horizon, as Kaori and Touma walked along one of its many streets. Kaori caught quite a few glances, Touma noticed, and he wasn't surprised – it's not every day the students in Academy City see a swordswoman armed to the teeth just nonchalantly walking down the street, let alone entangled in quiet smalltalk with another local student.

Directly before them, on the end of the street they were walking along, stood Touma's dorm. They slowly –not slowly enough for Kanzaki – approached it. As the tower block's shade grew ever longer and ever nearer, Kaori suddenly realized just how rapidly their proximity to said building was increasing. Soon enough, she realized they were right at the doorstep to Touma's elevator, as he turned, smiling at her. She couldn't help but smile back.

"I liked our lunch today," she heard herself say, her mind disconnected entirely from her vocal cords, as if someone else entirely was speaking, "You're not the worst person for company, Kamijou Touma."

"Call me Touma."

She grinned, and spoke, softly. "Take care, Touma-san."

"Kanzaki-san," he called out after her right after a hasty step she made away, trying to feel as little of the irritation at the separation as possible by proceeding with it as quickly as possible. She turned on her heel and replied:

"Call me Kaori."

His face reflected her grin. Or was it vice-versa? Who knows?

"Kaori-san," he said, quietly, "want to go grab lunch again tomorrow?"

There's that particular type of expressional action when a human being, who was previously smiling a kind, honest smile, is taken so aback by something that his physiognomy sort of just freezes over entirely. It's when that person's mouth hangs ajar and closes and opens again, and when that person wants to laugh out with all of their heart but simply cannot due to the sheer shock they are experiencing at the time. That's what was happening to Kaori right now.

"Yes," she finally said, about ten awkward seconds later. "Yes!" she laughed, demonstrating her happiness by exclaiming that little word. Not particularly caring to think her actions over much at this point, she wrapped her arms around Touma in a rather sudden and impromptu hug. Although at first he was rather surprised, our favorite inventor of misfortune as a weapon opted for the passive approach to this unexpected (though not unpleasant) turn of events: just roll with it.

Neither of them had any idea they were being watched.

* * *

**Ugh, so late at night here. I sort of… don't have the stamina to respond to those of my reviewers who I think would need a bit of a response, so I'll just throw out a thank you to each one of you and then quickly respond to ****h…x****, who I think I should personally thank for writing a full-fledged review equipped with critique as well. Thank you, I really appreciate your input, even if I wasn't too sure what you found annoying with my endnotes – I wasn't trying to attack people who disliked my story, really, I don't even see where I might've implied as much. As for the parentheses, while I understand that you may find them irritating, I'm sorry, but I'll have to disagree. The "good old rule" that parentheses make something sound like a report paper doesn't ring true to me. Parentheses are part of my writing style and while I, again, appreciate your critique, I don't think a bit of playing around with a punctuation mark is anything so wrong as to be avoided entirely. I'm just saying – it's my forte. My forte is my own. My style is also my own, and if it breaks a few "good old rules" that just means it's **_**different**_**, not **_**worse**_**, considering we ARE talking about a punctuation mark. Don't get me wrong, of course – like I said, I appreciate the critique, it's just that with this particular part I don't exactly agree.**

**Now that that's done, I'd like to thank you guys for all the favourites and follows and everything you've given this fic! Jesus, guys, I've never gotten as much attention for a fanfic before. I need to write more anime romance, this is a freaking goldmine. Thanks a lot.**

**one last thing: crap, this chapter is like four hundred words short of what I consider my standard chapter length. Darn. But yeah.  
**

**Signing off for tonight, BlazeInfinity.**


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